Thats not how the internet works. Domain names are a mutually agreed mapping between IP addresses and arbitary names. Nothing more. You and I could create that xxx TLD if we wanted to. A Government could do it. Porn sites could (and actually might) create their own DNS root and not tell the UK Government.
The Pirate Bay has been blocked by all the main UK ISPs - Of course their proxies havenāt, nor accessing via VPN, nor just typing in one of their IP addresses. The porn filter will be just as trivially defeated by determined younglings .
AFAIK the IP addresses ARE blocked, but the proxies are pretty much everywhere. Thatās for a handful of NZB and torrent sites. There are MILLIONS of porn sites. Theyāll have to automate blocking because thereās no way to deal with that much porn byā¦ wait for itā¦ hand.
Remember this is the UK and not the US. The restrictions on what you can sell in the UK porn market (held on alternate Tuesdays around here when the fruit and veg market isnāt on) are much stricter than the US and a lot of whatās freely available on-line is illegal to sell and actually illegal to possess, even on your hard drive, in the UK. Bondage porn, however classy (!), is illegal, for instance.
Thereās also no real protection of free speech in the UK, so Holocaust denial, bomb-making plans and sundry other hate-speech and incitement to violence is all illegal here. Which Iām fine with and which you agree is fair game for filtering, so if the government decides that eg rape porn should be illegal and added to the list of things that we shouldnāt possess, is that really the human rights battle you want to be fighting?
Also, I may just be getting middle-aged.
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Also some classic doublespeak there according to The Guardian. Cameron is asking the ISPās straight out to call the filters ādefault onā when customers will in fact have to opt in to them when they sign up. Actually, maybe calling it default on is a straight lie?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/21/david-cameron-war-internet-porn
This is what I was saying above, this whole filter strikes me as people saying, āWhen I was a kid we had to work for our porn.ā I donāt even know the provenance of the earliest porn I got access to when I was a teenager (presumably a kid stole it from their dad or a convenience store somewhere up the chain, but I didnāt know that kid).
Was it crucial to my development that my access to porn was limited so that I cherished the porn I could get? I really donāt think thatās the case. From what Iāve read (in places I canāt remember or cite, but I swear it happened) kids donāt access nearly as much porn online as people think they do.
If you are really concerned, put a family computer in the living room, not a computer in your kidās bedroom. By making them wait until you are out or until youāve gone to bed and by making them be careful about their browser histories, youāll simulate the experience you had as a child.
Possession is one thing, exposure is another.
But I see your point, and the inherent lunacy in controlling peoplesā morality- and the ethical quagmire morality, legality and practicality entails when one attempts to distill a single, over-arching rule.
Iām fine with hate-speech, etc. being punishable when originating within oneās own borders. I do not agree with restricting access to it in general. (and thus maybe pretending it does not exist in the world)
As for rape porn: Itās not my cup of tea. But damn it, if itās role-playing between consenting adults, I canāt really see why it should be illegal. Itās not like keeping it legal will make producers of it put up large billboards and show it on BBC every Monday morning.
Itās not about porn. It about letting others dictate a specific, perhaps even arbitrary, set of morals upon a population.
EDIT:
I donāt meant to seem ornery, even though my tone might suggest it:)
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